


i'll follow you into the dark

by emullz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, sorry i'm sadistic and i had to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:50:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3879337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emullz/pseuds/emullz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when there really is a battle at mount weather and not all goes as planned. based on the song by death cab for cutie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll follow you into the dark

When Clarke saw Bellamy again, it was in the midst of a war. The Mountain Men and the Grounder’s were finally fighting after nearly a century of oppression, and Clarke’s meager amount of people was caught in the middle of it. All treaties aside, Clarke wasn’t quite sure if they were hostages or allies. All she knew was the violence.

It was a real battle, the kind that Clarke only read about in storybooks, the kind that Bellamy had only heard in myths from his mother’s mouth on the loneliest of nights. The kind of battle that killed more than could ever regain. Not just the people they’d grown to love, but their trust, their happiness. The kind of battle that killed the innocence of every person on the battlefield. 

And they weren’t fighters, as much as they’d like everyone to believe. They were builders, and farmers, and mechanics. They were children, and they were falling. 

Clarke didn’t know how to make up for all the carnage, all the blood spilling onto the ground they’d just claimed as their own, and then he emerged from the other side looking like a hero out of the old stories. She could hear Bellamy’s voice, a crackling frequency, telling her to stay safe, and her voice, catching in her throat, telling him to stay alive. “I’ve done my job,” she wanted to tell him. “Please do yours.” 

They barely had time to lock eyes and catch the beginning of each other’s smiles when they were drawn away, Bellamy to hack at the enemy and she to thread a needle, but the the curl at the corner of Clarke’s mouth was what he was fighting for, and with every stitch she willed him to come back to her. 

Clarke patched people up left and right. Children, friends, the dying. As she set bones and pressed red hot metal to flesh and listened to more screams than she’d thought was possible, her only thought was of her father’s constant advice: “Kiddo, so long as I don’t open the box, the cat could be dead or alive. Anything is possible until you try it out.” 

As long as Bellamy wasn’t on the ground in front of her, bleeding out, there was nothing telling her that he wasn’t perfectly okay. She clung to this, to the idea that her father was somehow keeping the lid on the box, keeping him alive. The battle raged, and she never had a spare moment, but the lid stayed shut. 

And then, when the fighting stopped and all the Mountain Men were dead, Clarke helped wander around the carnage to find the wounded. The lid finally sprung open when she found him lying on the ground with a bullet in his stomach and a trail of blood trickling down his chin. She fell on her knees to his side and she shook his shoulder, his pressure point, like she was trained. When he groaned and lifted his gaze to hers, she realized she’d never been trained to deal with a miracle. 

Clarke managed to help him stumble his way out of the mess of bodies and into the forest they knew so well. Bellamy collapsed underneath a tree, with his back against the trunk, and he wondered why she was always saving him from himself. 

“Bellamy,” he remembered her saying through the haze that the gunshot had put in his mind. “Don’t go, don’t-“ 

He managed to lift a bloody hand and place it on her cheek, and he whispered something but he didn’t know what it was, all he knew was what he was leaving behind and what he was going to and her lovely face slipping in and out of his vision. 

Bellamy hoped that he got to tell her that he loved her, before he died. He thought Clarke should know, through all the blood and the pain that they’d been through, the bombs and the fires and the children that were no longer here, that she was it. All of it. 

When he got too tired to think, Bellamy fixed his eyes on the stars that were just visible through the tops of the trees, and he remembered of the way Octavia would laugh when she heard the story of Aries. “How could she just forget to grab on to the sheep? How could she just forget?” 

And then the golden fleece of the ram became Clarke’s golden hair, and the sky got closer and closer and he could feel her tears splashing on his mouth and her lips pressed to his cheek, but he couldn’t curl his fingers around her hand like he so desperately wanted to.

He was already up in the stars. 

\- -

The days after were everything but easy. Octavia raged and screamed and wouldn’t believe that he was gone until Clarke lead her to his body, still propped up against the tree, still staring at the never-ending blue of the sky. She held his hand for a long time as if he was still there as Clarke looked on, her eyes dry, her heart numb. 

She knew exactly where he was.

Every day, when Clarke woke up with a ringing chorus of “don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” playing in her head, after his face populated her dreams, she could feel his breath like a summer breeze on her neck. When she took a walk amongst the trees, she saw his freckles written in the constellations. Every blanket was his arms encircling her, every rustle of the branches was his voice, laced with sarcasm and laughter. 

And, always, his whispered words haunted her. “I’m not going to heaven or hell without you. Clarke, I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait for you in the dark.” 

When Clarke wanted to speak to him to badly it felt like her chest was ripping open, she asked Octavia to tell her a story from the old Greek myths, the kind he loved to talk about. It was most often the story of Pandora and her box, and how she was curious and naive and she opened the lid and all the evils came out, but she shut the lid before hope could get out. It was an appropriate tale.

In his death, she’d let hope out. 

So when Clarke saw the arrow notched at Octavia and heard the bowstring twang, she leapt in front of it. There wasn’t anything else she could do, any hope left to live for. It embedded itself in her stomach and she felt her breath rush out of her, a cold numbness spreading from the spot where the arrow had landed. Octavia’s knife lodged itself in his neck, and Clarke could hear the gurgling of the enemy’s final breaths, but it was too late. 

Octavia crumpled by Clarke’s head, cradling it in her lap until she realized that if she didn’t keep fighting, they’d both die. Clarke watched her get up and jump back into battle. She was stronger, she could live without him. She’d found a way to fight. 

All Clarke had found was a way to die. 

And die she did, amongst the trampling feet of a battle, with nobody beside her but with her hand clasped around the space of a promise the exact size and shape of his hand, her eyes fixed on the same stars where Bellamy was waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> so this was written completely at 1am one morning and then edited (just by me) the next afternoon, so don't hate too bad. 
> 
> listen to the song. enjoy the fic. hit me up on the media (emullz on ff.net and tumblr, also b3ll4rke on tumblr if you so desire)


End file.
